In a strange turn of events, it’s been revealed that No Man’s Sky was very close to losing its name after ‘secret stupid legal nonsense’.
Thankfully, developer Hello Games recently confirmed that their massive open universe exploration/survival game gets to keep its title after a settlement deal.
So what happened? Well, Studio boss Sean Murray talked a little bit about their legal scuffle with British broadcasting company BSkyB across a series of tweets.
Apparently, the legal battle had been going on for three years. Back in January 2014, Sky managed to win against Microsoft over ‘Skydrive’ which was changed to ‘Onedrive’ as a result.
Murray himself cited that particular case as evidence that the situation was pretty serious – after all, Hello Games aren’t exactly Microsoft in terms of size or power.
Yay! We finally settled with Sky (they own the word "Sky"). We can call our game No Man's Sky. 3 years of secret stupid legal nonsense over
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) June 17, 2016
This is the same folks who made Microsoft change Skydrive to Onedrive… so it was pretty serious
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) June 17, 2016
Stressful stuff, to be sure. The last thing anyone wants when they’re trying to work on a game (especially one as ambitious as No Man’s Sky) is to have to fuck about with a bunch of legal crap.
Still, Murray is clearly now able to make light of the situation…
On the plus side perhaps this is the real reason Skynet never happened…
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) June 18, 2016
on the plus side, I now know more about trademark law than any sane man would ever want to
— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) June 18, 2016
No Man’s Sky was recently pushed back from its original June release date in favour of an August launch, a move which really pissed off some fans.
But by all accounts, it’s shaping up to be a genuinely great game – the more time they get to spend polishing it, the better.
Now we can all sit around speculating what Hello Games would have changed the name to if Sky had won. Personally, I like No Man’s Pie.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.